What Ryanair says it's doing

Ryanair announced plans to cancel between 40 and 50 flights a day until the end of October in a bid to improve its ratio of on-time flights.

The no-frills airline said the cancellations would happen over the next six weeks.

Ryanair claimed the drastic move was necessary "to improve its system-wide punctuality which has fallen below 80 per cent in the first two weeks of September through a combination of ATC capacity delays and strikes, weather disruptions and the impact of increased holiday allocations to pilots and cabin crew as the airline moves to allocate annual leave during a 9 month transition period (April to December 2017) to move the airline’s holiday year (currently April to March) to a calendar year (Jan to Dec) from 1st January 2018 onwards."

Ryanair’s Robin Kiely explained: “We have operated a record schedule (and traffic numbers) during the peak summer months of July and August but must now allocate annual leave to pilots and cabin crew in September and October (while still running the bulk of our summer schedule).

What it's actually doing

The statement was made on Friday - and led to 82 flights being axed that day and a further 80 on Saturday, followed by 82 on Sunday.

Ryanair's marketing director, Kenny Jacobs,said there was "a slightly higher number this weekend as we begin to implement these cancellations".

As a result, on each day, as many as 15,000 Ryanair passengers were told shortly before departure that their plane has been cancelled. They were then asked to choose between claiming a refund or rebooking their flight.

The fallout

Passengers using both Glasgow and Edinburgh Airports for flights to and from Berlin, Frankfurt and Dublin were among those 15,000 affected by the Ryanair cancellations.

If the airline cancels 40 flights per day for six weeks at a load factor of 90 per cent, approximately 285,000 journeys would be affected

Many took to Twitter to vent their fury at the company, which four years ago launched an Always Getting Better campaign, which Chief Executive Michael O'Leary has described as an effort to stop "unnecessarily p*****g people off."

Damage Limitation - and Government 'concern'

Ryanair tries to appease angry customers by publishing lists of all flights to be cancelled until Wednesday.

But travellers want a list of all flights due to be cancelled over the next six weeks.

The airline admitted it had mismanaged the planning of pilot holidays.

Mr Jacobs said: "We have messed up in the planning of pilot holidays and we're working hard to fix that."

The “tighter crewing numbers”, said to be a result of a new leave calendar, means pilots and cabin crew need urgently to take vacations.

The UK Government also waded into the row - with Martin Callanan, the aviation minister, said: “I am very concerned to see all of these reports of stranded Ryanair passengers. We expect all airlines to fulfil their obligations to their customers and do everything possible to notify them well in advance of any disruption to their journey. “In the event of any disruption or cancellation, airlines must ensure customers are fully compensated and every effort is made to provide alternative travel arrangements.”

What you're entitled to if a flight is cancelled

Under EU rules you are entitled to “rerouting, under comparable transport conditions, to your final destination at the earliest opportunity”. However a definition of “the earliest opportunity” has not yet been made in court.

Many passengers are being told they may need to wait several days before they can be flown to their destination.

But the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) says airlines are obliged to book affected passengers on a rival airline “where there is a significant difference in the time that a reroute can be offered on the airline’s own services”.

The CAA does not define “significant”; easyJet, Britain’s biggest budget airline, insists that if it can get you to your destination within 48 hours then it will not allow a switch to another airline.

Duty of care

Under EU rules, "Passengers shall be offered free of charge (a) meals and refreshments in a reasonable relation to the waiting time; (b) hotel accommodation in cases where a stay of one or more nights becomes necessary."

The airline is obliged to provide these, but if it does not, you should keep all receipts to claim back the cost later (and note that “refreshments” do not include alcohol).

The airline's obligation extends for as long as it takes to get you to where you need to be.

Cancellations

Ryanair must pay €250 cash compensation for each passenger on a cancelled flight of up to 1,500km, rising to €400 for longer flights.

The only way it can escape this liability is if it informs passengers of the cancellation at least two weeks ahead; or, if it gives you a week’s notice and finds another flight that gets passengers to their destination less than four hours after the scheduled time of arrival; or if gives passengers less than a week’s notice but puts them on a flight that arrives less than two hours after you were supposed to get there.

How to claim compensation

In normal circumstances Ryanair claims are said to be routinely paid in a week or less. However, due to the number of passengers affected, processing times are likely to be significantly longer.

So will this damage Ryanair?

Loizos Heracleous of Warwick Business School, a Professor of Strategy who has researched the airline industry, thinks it won't.

He said: "Despite the current general annoyance about this matter, given Ryanair’s fast growth, expanding route network, and tempting value proposition this incident is unlikely to have a lasting effect on Ryanair’s performance.

"Its profitability leads the industry in terms of gross and net margins. Its growth is fast and ambitious, it is a leader in ancillary revenues, and it is the most efficient airline in terms of CASK (a ratio that measures cents of cost per available seat kilometre), that also makes it the greenest airline.

"It appears that Ryanair had to cancel these flights because of harmonization of Irish with EU rules about how many hours pilots can fly in a certain period of time. The harmonization involved moving Ryanair’s year starting on 1 April, to the EU’s requirement of using a calendar year to calculate pilots' flight hours.

"Even though, according to Ryanair, the percentage of flights affected is small, the impact in terms of adverse publicity and frustration to customers is large. Customers do have the usual European passengers’ rights with respect to meals, accommodation and compensation in the event of cancelled flights.

"However, this is of little consolation to people whose holidays and business meetings have been messed up, and at short notice at that. Even though Ryanair tried to communicate with all affected passengers, it is clear that this process did not go entirely smoothly, causing frustration and uncertainty among people whose journey has been affected.

"It would be necessary for Ryanair to come up with information on future flights it will cancel as soon as possible so that passengers have more lead time to make other arrangements."